Asking Questions

The Spring 2022 issue of “Moment Magazine” is devoted to education. One of the articles is “What Is the One Thing Students Should Leave College Knowing?”

During my 40 year career in higher education the question of what graduates should know and be able to do was one my colleagues and I considered often.  It was an especially challenging issue at a community college, where many programs led to certification in vocational areas whose outcomes were strictly defined by accrediting bodies, with minimal “general education” (often defined, but not limited to the liberal arts) requirements. I always felt this was a disservice to students, since as graduates  (or as currently enrolled adults who were caring for families, working, and already eligible to vote) they were going to be citizens of their communities and the world.  

As I read the “Moment” interviews with a wide array of educators, authors, editors, and non-profit leaders, I resonated most with the responses that stated that students should leave knowing how little they actually knew and how to continue learning throughout their lives. According to Dean Bell, President and CEO of the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership, students “end up leaving school with a body of content knowledge, but not really knowing how to inquire - to cross-examine their own ideas and to be open to others’ beliefs, even when those beliefs don’t seem to resonate with their own.”

What an apt lesson for today’s divided world, one in which I find myself increasingly unable to find enough common ground to even know how to ask questions of those whose beliefs are different from mine, never mind engage in meaningful conversation.  The result is that I am isolated from them, as they are from me, and communication becomes even harder. If we are lucky, perhaps the students leaving college now will find a better way.